Patty, grafting from a seedling stock unto a mature tree could speed up the fruit production of the seedling variety. This is a trick used by plant breeders who have hybrid seeds and would want to evaluate their fruits the soonest. While this has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt to cut the time in half for species such as apples, pears, plums, peaches and other temperate fruits, I have not come any scientific articles that uses such tricks in citruses. I suggested to Millet in the old garden web forum that he try it. He has lots of his own hybrid satsuma seedlings that needed to be evaluated the soonest, and perhaps we can have Millet Satsuma soon.

As a propagator, you use the budwood from mature tree and graft them to suitable rootstocks for fruit production.

As a plant breeder, you use tricks at your disposal to speed up the fruit production and evaluation of a newly developed hybrid. That includes growing intensely and vigorously, perhaps cycling through several cold and warm cycles in a controlled environment, and of course grafting the budwood from seedling hybrid unto a mature tree to hasten fruit production and evaluation.

Thanks Joe, now if Millet will tell us of his experiment LOL.
So, if I take a scion from a seedling and graft onto a MATURE citrus tree, it will produce faster than if I grafted onto a 'pencil sized' P Tri.? You said this works on fruits...is this what Millet is trying out on citrus? If this is true, then I could use my citrus seedlings (Honey murcott, lemon, Meiwa, Ponderosa, Rangpur, Citrangequat, Clementine) & graft onto a similar mature citrus tree to get fruits faster (?) ...will still graft onto my seedling rootstock too & see what the diff is.
Betty, I apologize. Now I know where you got this info from. I just never saw it the citrus forums.
YOOOOOO HOOOOOOO....Millet!???

no reason to apologise. no matter how old or new to citrus we are there will still be a lot to learn.

I was told this could work, but.... whose to say it would. Its still something to try

I was wrong in thinking it was a definate fact, not just a possibility. I've been doing a lot of reading upon citrus seedlings, best way to get them to fruit. I just have several varieties that I'd love fruit from sooner than later. but, hey, I have my big ones and if they develope fruit that should satisfy me until my seedlings do.

I had a 1 year old trifoliate seedling flower(out of several hundred seedlings.) I had a 2 year old seedling sunquat fruit several dozen fruit(convinced me sunquat is a curiosity only as they were good but there are much better tasting fruit.) I had a 3 year old long huang kat fruit(too late to get sweet and not that cold hardy). However, it took 4 years for a grafted flying dragon to fruit. I have a grafted meyer lemon take 5 years and no fruit(buds from it grafted fruited in one year) but I think I fertilized too much(I gave up on it and topworked it to something else). A friend had a cocktail grapefruit seedling take 17 years to fruit. So, no telling!

A guy in Oklahoma has a very old citrange that has never fruited, I believe it is because the yearly freezes kill back the fruiting growth every year. Potted citrus probably take longer.

Ditto as to what MrTexas experiened. I have been whining about my Moro Blood orange of not having any blooms for the first four years. I ended up grafting all the blood and pigmented oranges I can find over it. Then the Moro branch that I left untouched bloomed after the grafting session. All the grafts are blooming this season as well as the old Moro branches.

But about three years ago, I took a bud from that Moro and grafted them unto a Navel of my friend, and he had Moro blooms just 6 months after the grafting session and had Moro fruits well ahead of me.

Although this is not a citrus I have a similar experience. I have a plum (I forgot the kind) that I cut drastically one foot above ground, my intent was to dug the roots also but too lazy I kept postphoning. This happenned just 5 months ago. I did it because the tree did not fruit for 6 years but my other noncitrus plants have been fruiting every year. It is a matured plum about 8 inches trunk in diameter and over 10 feet tall.So anyway suckers are now over a foot long and so many of them. Perhaps now I changed my mind to terminate it. My plan now is to graft all kinds of plums and other fruits to them come fall. I hope that they will fruit faster that its mother.

I now remember Joe Real's post on the old form about grafting young immature citrus buds onto mature citrus trees. Unfortunately I never got around to trying it, and then forgot it. I'm glad Joe mentioned it again. I will try it. I don't know if it will work, only because if it did, I think that the method would be well known in the citrus industry. However, I am going to graft several buds this very afternoon. I did grow about 100 hybrid Clementine seedlings that were seeded from last years Clementine crop (winter of 2004/2005). They are all now between one year to 16 months old, and have grown to 30 to 40 inches tall, with 5 to 20 side branches (mostly around 10 side branches). Mandarins normally take 5 years to bloom and fruit, when grown outside in areas like Florida, or southern California. However, I think I can get them to bloom in 2 to 2-1/2 years in the greenhouse. I have them growing on three 20-feet long X 12 inches wide heating rolls. I keep their root zones at 80.6 degrees Fahrenheit (optimum for root growth) and the air temerature as close to 80-90 degrees Fahrenheit as possible (optimum for foliage growth) year around. This should cut the tree's maturity time in half. The reason that I chose Clementine is because they DO NOT come true from seed. Therefore every seedling will be a one of a kind never seen before on earth citrus variety (BTW, I got the phrase "one of a kind never seen before" phrase from past posts by Dr. Malcolm Manners and I like the phrase). However, I did find out that you ACTUALLY CAN get true to type Clementine Trees from seed, because out of the two hundred Clementine seeds that I planted I got 32 seeds that also germinated some nucellar embryos, and these would, of course, be a clones of the mother Clementine tree. I tossed out all but one of the true Clementine Tree seedlings. I have just transplanted the 100 hybrid Clementines from 4x4x14's into 6x6x16 tree pots. I expect to see blooms within one year. Lastly, thanks again Joe for reminding me of the grafting of the young buds method. - Millet.